“The following tales are properly called “stokus.” A stoku is an amalgam of short story and haiku. It is story as it inclines towards a flash of a moment, insight, vision or paradox.

It’s origin is mysterious, its purpose is revelation, its form compact, its subject infinite. Its nature is enigma as it finds tentative form in fiction, like the figure materializing from a cloud, or a being emerging from vaporous block of marble.

By means of the stoku, that which was unknown reveals, in the medium of words, a translated existence. Thus worlds unknown can come into being in a lightning flash from the darkness of the mind.

About Ainehi Edoro

I hold a doctorate in English from Duke University and recently joined the Marquette University English faculty as an Assistant Professor. I love teaching African fiction and contemporary British novels. Brittle Paper is the virtual space/station where I play and experiment with ideas on how to reinvent African fiction and literary culture.

6 Responses to “#literaryinventions | A Note on Form by Ben Okri”
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[…] Short and packed full of rich imageries. If you asked Ben Okri what these “stories” are, he might call them “an amalgam of short story and haiku, a “story as it inclines towards a flash of a momen… […]

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